Dysto-mayto, Uto-mahto

In fiction, dystopias come in lots of shades.

There’s the oppressive gloom of social and governmental dystopias like V for Vendetta and Minority Report. The bleakness of ecological and environmentally skewed stories in the vein of Waterworld and Soylent Green. The menacing darkness of tech-induced hells such as The Matrix and The Terminator.

Mega-corporations. The post-apocalypse. Zombies.

But as varied (and as good) as these are, their premises are just dismal points plotted along the same grayscale continuum. The despair is widespread, the oppression equal opportunity.

How do you like your steak? Charred, burned, or just overcooked?

 

Many dystopic settings are points along the same grayscale contiuum.

But some of my favorite takes on dystopian futures come in vibrant colors. They have blue skies and fresh air. The food is good, and the tech is great.

Or if not - even if life never strays from beneath the dome of a city - at least the people are happy.

Can dystopias be beat?

Reading Teresa Jusino article on dystopias and the new brand of dystopia coming out, which prompted some thoughts of my own since I believe the dystopia-genre was created with a certain message in mind, and thus the unhappy endings.

Looking at dystopias from a psychological approach, since they are very much psychological as they are sociological studies, one has to keep in mind that humans evolved to cohere to their group. Why? Because being left out of the group meant death. Humans need other humans, not just for basic needs, but also for emotional support; being around those you care also lowers cortisol levels, a side effect of stress, which prolongs your life.  So what happens when the entire group follows an authoritarian government? Well the individual follows along as well, even if they know it’s not right. Social psychology experiments such as Milgram’s  and Zimbardo’s Stanford prison have shown that people, just like you and me, will follow authority figures even though that means conducting in unethical acts. We don’t want to be left out, simple as that. This also leads to social effects such as diffusion of responsibility, where it’s not our personal problem to confront Big Brother, and that surely someone else will do it. Except everyone else is thinking the same.

And in a world where everything is controlled by the government, it’s easy to imagine the people learn to become helpless. Because what’s the point? All you can do is breath, eat, and sleep.

There are rare cases where an individual will stand up, even at the cost of being ostracized by their group. But such cases like Martin Luther King Jr. and Gandhi have shown they face hostile reaction from their peers and eventual assassination. And that is the sad truth, sometimes it doesn’t pay to be a hero.

So can dystopias be beat? It’s a possibility, but it’s one that requires a lot of sacrifice from individuals, one that most of us are not willing to give (notice how people still drive around in their SUVs despite the rising gas prices). This is why heroes are so rare and revered, both in fiction and reality, because they did something that most of us can’t.

And I know it sounds very depressing, which is the point of dystopias, not to cheer you up but to kick you into gear. Don’t depend on a hero to come along when you yourself are capable of being active in your own government. Better to be mindful of what your government is becoming and halt its progress (i.e. don’t vote for bad politicians)  than to have to go through a bloody revolution to reverse its effects, which not only means fighting Big Brother, but also fighting people just like yourself who can’t quite see the truth.

Don’t beat a dystopia – prevent it!

Dystopia and hope

To try to bring together John's post on disliking depressing stories (a perfectly valid point) and Becca's question "What has dystopia done for you?", I'll get a little personal.

Like a lot of people -- like a lot of writers -- I carry around a certain amount of undiagnosed depression. My writing and my depression have a strange, symbiotic relationship, but for now let's just say that I've been wrestling with it for most of my life.

Dystopian stories are depressing, as John pointed out. I would even say that there's a certain correlation between a dystopian society and the inside of a depressed mind. I can attest to the interior harangues, the (self)flagellation, and the  sort of numbed haze that dystopian medications seem to induce.

Fortunately, a good chunk of dystopian fiction involves resisting and fighting the dystopia on some level. Maybe the protagonist does not win, but the fight will go on because we've seen one character struggling in the system, we've seen one light flicker to life in the darkness. There'll be more.

Here's where Becca's question comes in: dystopias remind me to keep fighting.

In other flavors of fiction, where people are beautiful and the quest may be tough but there's help to be had and love to be found, it's easier to fight the good fight. And I enjoy those stories, but they don't resonate with a depressive like me the way resisting-the-dystopia stories do.

I was going to recommend Mockingbird by Walter Tevis -- it's a hopeful dystopia, with a post-apocalyptic flavor -- but apparently it's out of print. I got my copy through www.paperbackswap.com. If you can find it in a library or a second-hand bookstore...

...which brings me around to digital publishing and books that perhaps ought to be available as ebooks if nobody can be bothered to print them. I'm still a dead tree reader, but I can see how the wind's blowing. But that's another round robin topic.

What has dystopian fiction done for me, anyway?

The answer to that question is: a hell of a lot.

I mentioned in a reply to L.'s post that the first book I can remember really lighting up my neurons was The Giver, by Lois Lowry. Not to dis Pat the Cat, The Poky Little Puppy, or Mr. Grumpy, but The Giver spoke to me in an entirely different language.

It said, Adults are tall, imperfect children. It said, The whole world can be wrong.

It said, Self-deception is more powerful and alluring than you know, yet. It said, Question everything.

Succinctly, it said, "Think for your own damn self, mini-Becca," and it did so in a way that was both beautiful and empowering.

Dystopian fiction is often described as a warning, a stark illustration of what awaits at the end of the road we're already barreling down way too fast to hit the brakes anyway. For me, though, dystopian fiction introduced me to my first real role model.

I wanted to keep the stories, wanted to share them. I wanted to see in color and show others what I saw. I wanted to be strong enough to bear the truth and the memories, all of them. And I've never lost that guiding star.

What has dystopian fiction done for you?

Round Robin - Dystopia: Unhappily Ever After

Dystopias are quite fascinating ‘what ifs’. What if the government became a tyrant? What if all our rights and freedoms were taken away? What if our lives were completely disposable? It gets pretty scary, like a horror movie on a sociological scale. And that’s what I believe dystopias were originally meant to achieve: to scare the hell out of you with terrifying Big Brother societies that could toss you around like their personal play thing. Your life meant nothing. You meant nothing.

But why all the unhappiness? Can’t we have a glimmer of hope that the hero may make? Sure, but it’s going to be a false hope. The idea of dystopias was a warning, that this was the sort of society you didn’t want and for good reasons too. George Orwell’s 1984 dystopian society was brutal fascism, where propaganda was pounded into your head and Big Brother invaded your privacy. You learned to believe in contradictions and to always trust the government’s decision. If Big Brother said ‘jump’, you would ask ‘how high?’ And in the end you couldn’t win. Oh, the hero (Winston Smith) does try, but ultimately he is broken and re-educated. It’s unhappy and it’s meant to be.    

A happy ending would only offset the warning that Orwell was trying to show. Imagine if the Surgeon General’s warning ended on a light note: Smoking Causes Lung Cancer, Heart Disease, Emphysema – oh but with modern medicine, you have a fair chance of surviving just about anything. Doesn’t quite have the same impact.

And think about it, if it were really that easy for the protagonist to escape or fix society, wouldn’t it have been done long ago? It takes a lot for society to change, massive movements and sometimes bloody revolutions. And if the government has an iron grip over the citizens, chances are any change has to occur underground, which really hinders it. Escaping may not be so great either as most folks don’t know how to survive on their own, and unfortunately, society has done nothing to prepare people – hell, they can’t even prepare kids who are entering the real world. And then there are surviving the elements, disease, and predators. After a while, Big Brother might not be so bad. 

The best way to stop a dystopian society is to prevent it from ever happening, because once it’s set up, you going to have a helluva time trying to get away. And although dystopias may be speculative fiction, there’s always a shred of truth to them, art imitating life. So be mindful, because Big Brother hasn’t stopped watching you.